FREE SAMPLE (Ch.1)

Note: Sample is unedited prerelease copy. Some details may change and typos will hopefully be caught.

Nic Joseph Von Nieuwenhuyse, you are an idiot.

I stood in the middle of the landing pad, glaring at the jagged Beijing skyline and wondering what had possessed me to let my daughter get on a helicopter with a strange man and fly to Mars.

Granted, she wasn’t legally my daughter, and the man she was with, while incredibly strange, was legally her adopted brother. I also didn’t have a lot of options; either she left the planet, or she would be executed for starting a revolution. Honestly, any sane adult in my shoes would have made the same decision.

Still, in hindsight, it all seemed like a very dumb idea.

But maybe I was just angsty because she was no longer within my sight. I had been prone to such irrational moods as of late.

The guards on the tarmac gave me about thirty seconds to process these complicated emotions before they reasserted dominance. “Clear the field!” one of them shouted.

Everyone obeyed. The chaos on the street resumed like some unseen director had called for a set change. The police vans surrounding the landing pad—presumably to shield Philadelphia’s covert exit from nosey passersby—pulled away from the curb. Someone barked orders into a megaphone, and the guards fled for the ramp that led back underneath the Council chambers.

I felt obliged to follow. They hadn’t decided what they were going to do with me, but I was sure waltzing into the sunset wasn’t an option. I may not be the United’s most wanted anymore, but I was definitely still in the top ten.

The gray-haired officer at the door directed traffic with his hands. “Tian, Feng, report to your lieutenant for new assignments.”

The aforementioned guards saluted and jogged into the tunnel, disappearing in shadow.

The officer pointed at the remaining soldiers. “You two, with me. And Dr. Von—”

I cut him off. “It’s just Nic.”

He didn’t miss a beat. “Dr. Nic, the General will see you in his office.”

“Again? I was just there!”

That’s literally where I’d just come from—ten minutes ago, when we’d struck a backdoor deal to get “Blue Fire” off planet. There’d barely been enough time for the man to walk back to his office.

The officer merely gestured into the tunnel. “Follow me, if you would.”

I sighed and took a step forward. No rest for the wicked, I see.

The Voice in my head reentered the chat. You need to stop saying that.

But the irony amuses me, I returned, which was the truth. I was fully aware that, ever since Phil had thwarted my plans to take over the world, I no longer met the moral or spiritual criteria to be deemed “wicked.”

You might start living up to it.

I slammed my foot on the asphalt.

The officer glanced back. “Everything all right, doctor?”

“Nope,” I announced, and followed him into the tunnel.

The Council chambers looked like a warzone. The giant concrete building was crawling with soldiers. Terrified staffers huddled behind police barricades, and armed guards blocked every office door. Along the hall, gloved techs worked at makeshift tables to bag and label electronics—cellphones, laptops, hard drives. All the digital evidence that had been recovered from the scene of the crime.

It was just like we planned. Earlier this morning, Philadelphia had interrupted a Council meeting and exposed a traitor. While the entire world watched on livestream, she’d revealed that Asia—General Secretary Mong’s own daughter—was funding the rebels and planning to frame her father for it. Asia had denied it, shots were fired, and then Asia had died right there in the middle of the ornate carpet.

A fact I still hadn’t fully processed.

But while my demonized ex-girlfriend was dead, her allies were alive and well. Now the government was doing exactly what we’d hoped they’d do: eat their own in a rabid witch hunt. The General would find the traitors—at the expense of violating his allies. Hundreds of secrets were about to come to light as every electronic in the building was scanned. There would be arrests and executions and coverups, and this house of cards might just be so shaken that it fell.

I smiled at a passing guard as I flirted with hope. This might actually work.

The pleasant feeling fled back into obscurity when we arrived at Mong’s office.

The General Secretary of the United sat behind his massive desk, in the exact same position he’d been in when I’d met with him less than an hour ago, like he was a video game character that had respawned. Multiple staffers chattered at him as they tried to contain the state of emergency with their checklists and memos.

He silenced them all with a flick of his fingers when he saw me. “Leave us,” he ordered in Mandarin.

They scattered like a flock of chickens. The guards patted me down for weapons—even though I literally hadn’t left their sight since the last time they frisked me—and shoved me into the room. Then they left and shut the door behind them, leaving me alone with the General.

I let out a sigh so hard it hurt my ribs.

Mong arched an eyebrow. “Are you well, doctor?” he asked, reverting to English.

“Very. You clearly don’t plan to kill me, or you would have had the guards do that.”

To call the gesture he made a “smile” would have been generous, but at least he appreciated my sense of humor. “Sit, please. We have much to discuss.” He gestured at the plush chair in front of his desk.

I obliged. “I’m flattered, but don’t you have way more important things to do than talk to me?”

Surely, I was the least of his worries right now. Operation Blue Fire was tomorrow. At precisely 9am on Thursday, September 17th, all of Philadelphia’s followers were scheduled to stand up and protest the government’s control.

Or at least they were, until my daughter had very dramatically gone on air and cancelled the whole thing.

Asia, as part of her evil scheme, had donated guns with faulty powercells to unassimilated outposts in Beijing and Washington. The guns would explode if fired, turning Blue Fire’s followers into suicide bombers. They would have wiped both seats of government off the map—and then Asia would have blamed her father and seized control, all while using her knowledge of the underground to crush the resistance once and for all.

It was a gruesome plan, but that was just another day in the office for my ex-girlfriend. What bothered me was that she had been using my daughter to pull it off.

Mercifully, the Holy Spirit was having none of it, and we’d found out before shots were fired. During her livestream, Phil had urged her followers to destroy the weapons and leave the city. We wouldn’t know until 9am tomorrow if they believed her.

You know, the Voice in my head commented in a tone that was, as usual, way too calm for the situation, you could just pray about it instead of spending the next sixteen hours panicking.

He had a point, but I didn’t get a chance to tell Him that before Mong spoke again. “Unfortunately, doctor, I don’t have the luxury of prioritizing my crises right now. I have several problems demanding my attention—but you might be able to help me solve one of them. I’m prepared to offer you a full pardon if you’ll do a job for me.”

I snorted. “Heard that one before. Personally, I’d rather go back to jail. It’d be less painful for all of us.”

He didn’t blink. “It’s about Red Rain.”

Of course, it was about Red Rain. It was always about Red Rain. No matter how many times I tried to destroy the data, no matter how hard I tried to convince everyone that I was no longer a mad scientist for hire—it always came back to the glorious apocalyptic weapon I created.

“I’m not giving you the formula,” I snapped. “And I really wish people would stop asking me that.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want the weapon, doctor. I want the antidote.”

“There isn’t one.” That was the entire point. Once the chemical was released into the atmosphere, there was nothing you could do to stop it. All you could do was wait for the rain to fall.

“There could be.”

“I realize that’s a grammatically correct statement, but that doesn’t make it any more plausible.”

The General leaned back in his chair. “Thanks to you, we now live in a world where Red Rain is possible.”

“Now seems like a great time to remind you that I did not, in fact, invent the working formula.” Even though the weapon had been my original idea, I did not have the illustrious honor of making it a reality.

“Perhaps not,” he consented, “but do you know where Dr. Smyrna is?”

I glitched out as my brain struggled to decode several critical pieces of information from that statement. Dr. Smyrna—Phil’s actual dad—was with her on the helicopter. The General, evidently, didn’t know that. That meant Cardiff Nolan, her weird adoptive brother, hadn’t told Mong who all was invited on this interstellar trip, and one or more of the guards had been bribed.

And the fact that Cardiff possessed the resources to buy the General’s own personal guard was important information indeed.

However, that also meant that Phil’s little deal with the devil didn’t extend to her immediate family. The General had guaranteed Phil’s safety as long as she left the planet and stayed off the grid. Apparently, the same bargain didn’t apply to her father.

And even though I thought Phil would be better off without the old man, I wasn’t going to be the one to turn him in.

Mong waited patiently for my answer. I could have lied, but I hadn’t been practicing falsehood very much lately, so I didn’t trust myself to pull it off. Instead, I chose my next words very carefully.

“At the exact moment, no,” I said, which was the truth. That helicopter could be anywhere by now—a fact which still perturbed me. “He was in Boston, until your daughter smashed the anthill.”

The mention of his recently deceased daughter distracted the General, as I’d hoped. “Precisely,” he growled, his grief bleeding out at the edges. “And until I find him, you are, regrettably, the scientist with the most knowledge of the project. So, I turn to you.”

I was about to tell him that he should turn around and take his blackmail somewhere else, but the Holy Spirit held my tongue.

Listen.

I inhaled. “What do you want?”

“I need you to help me destroy your creation.” Mong folded his hands on the desk. “Now that we know Red Rain is possible, I have to assume that, at some point, someone else will acquire the formula and start manufacturing it. And I have to assume that person intends to use the weapon against me and my people.”

“Those are both reasonable assumptions.”

“So, I need a countermeasure, a solution. Can the weapon be neutralized? Are there materials that are resistant to the acid? What can I do to protect my city?”

“I don’t know the answers to any of those questions.” I didn’t know Red Rain, not like Dr. Smyrna did. In this very rare case, I was more than happy to admit that the old man was smarter than me. He was the one who discovered a functioning compound.

Despite the fact that I’d invested my entire adult life into the project, I’d never been able to create a working formula that could function outside of a lab. I’d made hundreds of incredibly caustic compounds that could melt metal in a controlled environment, but nothing that was stable enough to be weaponized. If anything, I knew more ways to destabilize the formula than stabilize it.

I cringed when I realized I’d just convinced myself. Maybe I was the perfect person to destroy Red Rain.

“Then find the answers,” the General insisted, sounding like he had way more confidence in my ability than I did. “You will be given everything you need. A private lab, your choice of staff, unlimited funding.”

“Those are my favorite working conditions,” I admitted with a grumble.

“You’ll also have a generous salary.”

“Honestly, I prefer the excitement of working for commission. You never know when you’ll be able to pay rent.”

“And, as an employee of the state, you’ll be given a full pardon and diplomatic immunity.”

I put my hands up. “Okay, I’ll admit, you’ve clearly thought this through. But I’m a little offended that you think I’m naïve enough to fall for this. I don’t trust you.” I crammed as much distaste as I could into those four syllables and hoped he would take maximum offense.

He didn’t. “I’m not asking for your trust. I’m merely offering you a job.”

“Yeah, well, I’m currently enjoying an early retirement. Seriously, why would I work for you? I didn’t want to give you the weapon—why would I give you the antidote?”

I was willing to give the guy a little grace because he’d spared Philadelphia’s life. But he’d only done that because she’d spared his. He was still the leader of the psychotic world government that criminalized religion and murdered noncompliants. He would do anything to keep the world under his control—including use the countermeasure for Red Rain as blackmail, or something equally gross.

He frowned like I was a petulant child. “Doctor, I beg you to think this through logically. I don’t want Earth to burn—and neither do you.”

I had to admit, that was a goal of mine—and the formerly wicked part of my subconscious was still mildly appalled by that.

“Let me be frank,” the General declared without guile, “I have even less desire to start a war with Red Rain than you do. That weapon cannot be controlled even by those who wield it. Once it’s unleashed into the atmosphere, no one is safe.”

That was, again, the point—and I realized that, looking at the creases around his eyes and the tension in his jaw, he was worried.

And I should probably share the sentiment.

“I can assure you that I have no intention of gatekeeping the countermeasure. My goal is to render the threat of Red Rain inert by having a safeguard in place in every major city, with a chain of distribution into rural areas should we need it.”

I almost believed he meant it. Worse, I realized he was right. Anyone could invent a countermeasure, but the only entity with enough resources to deploy it globally was the United. In some sick irony, the only being who could help me save the world was the government I’d meant to destroy.

That is, if they could be trusted to keep their end of the bargain.

The General straightened. “If my word is not enough for you…”

“It isn’t.”

“…then let me tell you what’s in it for you: Andromeda’s inheritance.”

The mention of my daughter distracted me, as it always did.

He dragged a tablet towards him. “I had my staff pull the records. According to Thames’s will, Andromeda Nolan is set to inherit the bulk of the estate—including the mansion here in Beijing.”

I watched him swipe on the screen, suddenly realizing what made him so terrifying. It wasn’t his military power. It wasn’t his willingness to kill in cold blood. No, it was his inhuman ability to be ten steps ahead of everyone else.

The General hadn’t known until this morning that Philadelphia was using Andromeda’s identity. He’d had only hours to pull the records and devise this plan. She’d flipped the game board on him—and in one afternoon he had it completely reset to his advantage, with a dozen ways for him to checkmate.

“At the moment, Andromeda’s assets are being held by the state, pending the investigation. But I can release them.” He pushed the tablet towards me.

I didn’t look at the screen. “I thought we established that I’m not motivated by money.”

“No, but you might like to leave an inheritance for your daughter.”

I tensed.

He smiled. “I saw the paperwork. I know you adopted her.”

“The technical term is legal guardian…” I mumbled, but only because I did not like where this conversation was going.

“Would you like me to change that?”

To be honest, I hadn’t thought about it. I’d been a little preoccupied over the past few months—running from Asia, rotting in jail, literally dying and getting resurrected. I hadn’t had time to worry about paltry things like paperwork.

But now, I was thinking about it. Very hard.

The General tapped the screen with his finger. “Philadelphia—Andromeda—has the inconvenient problem of being two people, one of whom technically does not exist.”

It was unfortunately true. Philadelphia Smyrna, her birth name, was guilty of more crimes than I could count. On the other hand, Andromeda Nolan, her adopted identity, was technically dead. The real Andromeda Nolan, Thames’s niece, had died along with her family in a freak accident years ago. Thames had forged the records and modified her file to give Philadelphia a new life.

A gesture that was regretfully moot since Philadelphia had announced her identity on live TV.

“Andromeda is dead,” Mong repeated. “But she doesn’t have to be. I can merge her files, redact her criminal record, and make the adoption official. I have the power.”

He was the only one with the power. Mong was the only person on this planet who could make Philadelphia a legal citizen again, after all she’d done. She could forge another fake file, but she’d always be a fugitive, a criminal, masquerading behind a name that wasn’t hers. Only Mong could clear her record.

“She can be a whole person again,” he continued. “And if she holds up her end of the bargain, she can come home.”

I met his gaze. “And if she doesn’t?”

He shrugged, a callous twitch of his shoulders. “Then at least her estate will pass to her nearest of kin.”

I stiffened when I realized what he was implying—threatening.

Blue Fire may have escaped the gallows, but she was never coming back to Earth. Not unless I paid the bill.

“Well, you’re disgusting and manipulative,” I spat.

“A necessary evil,” he admitted.

“Not sure about the ‘necessary’ part.”

“Would you have willingly agreed to work for me if I didn’t have something you want?”

“Pfft, no.”

“Then it was a necessary evil.” He staged his hands on the desk again. “So, do we understand each other?”

“Oh, I understand you, loud and clear,” I started, “but I won’t…”

I hesitated. Every single cell in my body wanted to tell him off—but I didn’t have a good reason to.

I wasn’t keen on bargaining with another corrupt politician. Been there, done that, have the emotional scars and nearly dead parents to prove it. And yet, Mong wasn’t asking me to do anything I didn’t want to do. Someone had to come up with a solution to Red Rain, and I really should help stop the apocalypse I unleashed. In fact, I probably should have started working on a failsafe ten years ago.

I didn’t trust the government to be altruistic with the antidote. Once they had it, there was nothing to stop them from being picky about who lived and who died. But there were ways around that. I knew a tech mogul who could send the formula to all the district leaders at the click of a button. Jael may not have the resources to mass manufacture it, but she could at least get the word out.

And in the meantime, if I played ball, I might be able to bring Philadelphia home—and buy her a future where she didn’t have to hide behind someone else’s identity.

I poked the Voice in my head, hoping for a flashing sign in the heavens. Am I missing the obvious trap here?

He was silent. I knew what that meant: Keep doing what you’re doing until I tell you otherwise.

The General gestured vaguely with his fingers, as if corroborating my thoughts. “I ask you, doctor: What do you have to lose?”

I scowled. “At first calculation, nothing, but I’ll let you know if I change my mind after my findings have been peer reviewed.”

“Then we have a deal.” He stood. “I will have your lab ready by Monday. Take a few days off. Given the circumstances, I think it’s best you stay home for the weekend.”

I shoved my chair back. “I take it ‘home’ is a cozy jail cell in the basement?”

He folded his hands behind his back. “That won’t be necessary. As long as you work for me, you have immunity.”

I scowled harder, even though it was a lot of muscle effort for little effect. The key words were “as long as.”

“I’m naming you as the trustee of the Nolan estate. So long as Andromeda remains under investigation, you’ll be the sole executor of her assets. My staff will have the paperwork in order by morning.”

“Thank you,” I said, and I almost meant it. The fact that he’d thought of everything was still incredibly unnerving.

“I trust you to make wise financial decisions on Andromeda’s behalf. However, I will warn you.” His tone of voice didn’t change, but the threat in his eyes said everything. “I have people monitoring her activity. So I’d recommend not funding any more rebellions.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

“Very well then.” He pressed a button on his desk. “When you’ve made your decision on the adoption, come see me.”

The door opened, and the guards reentered. One—the gray-haired officer from before—gave me a light bow. “If you’ll follow me, Dr. Nic, I’ve called for a car.”

I stepped into the hall, eager to get out of this den of thieves.

“Oh, doctor,” the General called after me.

I glanced back.

He wasn’t smiling. “Stay safe tomorrow.”